I'm always interested in reading a bit more about some great minds or finding out new stuff (binge reading, if you will). Select a single person that's the most significant for you personally, that influenced and impressed you the most in your audio journey so far. Perhaps a short explanation of why. Now, I kinda meant a public figure. There is a lot of good folks to choose from, and it's not an easy task to select just one. I could name several people off the top of my head easily, but pick just one.

For me, Siegfried Linkwitz will always be an immortal legend that's out of any competition whatsoever. That guy was meta-human, way beyond normal level both in intelect and contributions, not even a fair fight, so I'm excluding him.

From the rest of us mortals, for all his amazing work and a gigantic resource of knoweledge, seasoned impressions and general useful stuff,Tyll Hertsens.

Steve Miller (not the musician). He was an instructor at Los Angeles Recording School. He was an extremely knowledgeable and informative instructor, and charismatic as hell. In short, he helped me become a better listener.

Peter Bradstock at Doublehelixcables. Though we sadly are no longer in touch, not only did he give me incredibly generous deals on my first HD650 and LCD2.2 years ago (allowing me to get a glimpse of great sound) he taught me everything he knew about cable making and supplied me with materials for years near cost (this was when Cryoparts and Jena Cables were basically the only game in town). Really got me into the experimentation and craftmanship possibilities of DIY. The high dollar pursuit of perfect sound will never be my thing, but my interactions with Peter really made DIY a core part of who I am now. Really thankful.

A bit of a different take, but I have someone who really accelerated my audio experience and knowledge (mostly in 2-channel, as I came to headphones later), and I've never interacted directly with them. Specifically I'm talking about Steve Clay - the founder of Audiogon.

Since I was a kid I've been interested in audio, playing with my dad's reel-to-reel and turntable. I did buy some audio gear when I was high school, but it wasn't great. I got back into the hobby a few decades later, and by then I had the financial resources to play at a different level. Lucky for me there were now places where you could source used audio gear easily, and if you knew what you were doing it was also fairly low risk. Thanks to Audiogon (and to a much lesser extent eBay) I was able to play and experiment, finding out what I liked and what pieces worked well together, without the fear of getting stuck with a ton of old gear and wasting a lot of money (I also had kids by that time!). I learned to buy quality gear, and usually had no issue selling it again with minimal loss. Thanks to this community I upgraded and played with my 2-channel system for many years, and got a lot of feedback from other members along the way. I eventually got off the 2-channel merry-go-round, finding a system I loved that gave me the sound I wanted.

My amplifier went from Yamaha to Denon to Rotel to McCormack Audio* to finally Atma-Sphere*.
My CD-player went from Sony to California Audio Labs to Acurus to Rega to finally Resolution Audio*.
My speakers went from Infinity to B&W to Chario to finally Merlin*.
And all of this was before I got deep into the headphone community that I now find myself spending almost all of my audio-related time.

I was also able to message with and later get to meet in person and/or speak live on the phone with the owners/designers of the companies I've marked with an *. It's not a coincidence that all of my "final" gear is from people I got to interact with directly. This has informed my time in the headphone space as well, as 90% of my gear is from companies/people I've gotten to know.

I can honestly say that without the support of the community and safe trading/selling space of Audiogon I would not be where I am today in this hobby.

I have to say, Harry Pearson, (and to a lesser extent, J. Gordon Holt) despite his idiosyncrasies, defined the golden age of Audio for me, and his digest TAS with him as the editor and his policy of keeping the editorial content completely separate from the advertising was both groundbreaking and game changing.
This model eventually succumbed to big business interests (in the case of both TAS, and especially Stereophile with John Atkinson at the hellm) These magazines corrupt and confuse many potential music lovers and force the real audio enthusiasts 'underground' into the above mentioned forums and small print run magazines.

A bunch of people from the big headphones discord group. mr.tie, k4rstar, psal, xecuter, and many others were all instrumental in my early days. I have to give a shoutout to mr.tie in particular, he was always extremely helpful to me. Of course I also did a lot of my own research and investigation and experimentation. It's been a wild ride but I guess most of my gear acquisitions the past 6 months have been entirely of my own volition. Credit where credit is due, and that server definitely had a big impact on a lot of my early day choices in gear and speakers.

When I was in college there were sanctions against South Africa. No artists played here, and the music scene was pretty much Rick Dees top 40 piped in from the US. There were some older students living in digs across the street from my school dorm right above the local bar that took a liking to me and turned me on to all sorts of great music. I have no idea what their names are now, but I owe them a sincere debt of gratitude for setting me on the right path.

Shitty business man, great engineer of loudspeakers back in the day. The speakers used today in sound reinforcement, movie theaters, and in some homes are not much different from his designs over 70 years ago. Dude killed himself while he was fairly young, but his legacy lives on.

He designed "old pa" shit, not the inefficient skinny high-WAF towers of today with multiple 5.5" "woofers" that required 200W to violently move in and out without making any sound below 55Hz.

Shitty business man, great engineer of loudspeakers back in the day. The speakers used today in sound reinforcement, movie theaters, and in some homes are not much different from his designs over 70 years ago. Dude killed himself while he was fairly young, but his legacy lives on.

He designed "old pa" shit, not the inefficient skinny high-WAF towers of today with multiple 5.5" "woofers" that required 200W to violently move in and out without making any sound below 55Hz.

Fun and scientific can be Boolean True "and" True. After auditioning his HD650 with Kameleon set-up I knew enough. I might not have his skill set but when the music sounds that right, you know what to look for. He was right.

The audio hobby became simpler and more enjoyable after meeting him.

I am happy he is still doing his thing.

Few things keep me sane: my loved ones, my music and my hobbies. Few is almost an understatement here...

Honestly my Dad. I grew up listening to classical music records on his giant speaker set up at home. I don't think that without him I would have ever had the concept in my head that audio quality was a thing to be sought after and enjoyed. Hell I don't think I would like music as much as I do without all the times I spent with him as a child.

Canadians might be able to relate to this. My greatest musical influence was Brent Bambury when he was host of "Brave New Waves" on CBC Radio in the eighties. I was this kid from the country who was bored stiff of Madonna and her ilk being played ad nauseum on commercial radio. Brent's show introduced to so many great bands on the alternative side of the musical stream.

I'm not sure if I can name only one person that influenced me in this hobby, I like to read impressions from people and try to correlate them with mine, but usually I notice that, more than agreeing or not, I'm drawn to that person's charisma/hability to explain why he dislikes/likes X (preferences, situation, etc) instead of the actual product itself (ie: "I don't agree 100%, but what a cool, articulate person").

I do really like how @purr1n explains what he hears, more than agreeing with him or not, he gives a clear picture that helps me to understand things a bit better.

To be honest, the first audio websites that I've read were TAS and Stereophile, followed by Head-fi. I became frustrated because there was no way to correlate/get an approximate idea of what was good and what was crap, preferences aside.

The first site that I discovered that was different was Romy The Cat's forum (GoodSoundClub), it was like: "oh, so I'm not dumb for suspecting that everything wasn't awesome all the time" (also, Romy is hilarious ).
After that, I've thought: "Damn, probably I can find more valuable websites that talk about things that I can actually buy", and searching headphone measurements/reviews I've found SBAF (and Tyll's Innerfidelity)